Erik Sumida

A10968434
Midterm EDS 129A
Fall 2013
The great push on how teachers see their students is fueled by the need to better
understanding who they are and where they may have come from. In order to understand a
student better, teachers need to understand the students social and cultural background while
trying to learn about the student as an individual. People of similar backgrounds can be radically
different individuals. Therefore, teachers need to be aware of the backgrounds of students while
acknowledging their individuality.
Students come from various backgrounds. This may make it harder for a teacher to
connect with a particular class, but it can also enhance the class. Because everyone has come
from a different background, we all have different life experiences. These life experiences lead
us to knowledge that shapes our understanding of the world. The French theorist Bourdieu would
describe this knowledge and life experiences as cultural capital. Cultural capital is, the
general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed down from one
generation to the next(MacLeod, pg 68). This cultural capital can be transmitted to other
students, not just family, if a teacher allows an opportunity to do so. This is the benefit of when a
teacher sees their students color, gender, cultural and social backgrounds. It allows different
viewpoints a chance to enhance a lesson by feeding a students curiosity while checking their
understanding of the topic. Sometimes previous learning can interfere with learning and
understanding new material (Donovan, pg 143). Knowing a students background can help a
teacher anticipate possible challenges for them and will be able to incorporate that into the
lesson. These lessons can then be more relevant to the students. Knowing the backgrounds of
students is important but that is only one aspect of them and it does not necessarily define who
they are.
Understanding a students background is important but we also need to understand them
as an individual. Understanding a student as an individual can mean knowing their potential,
their strengths, and their weaknesses. If a student is struggling or bored in a particular class, that
class may not be for them. They may need a class that provides extra time on a subject or they
may need a class that challenges them better. Recognizing this is seeing the student. Some kids
are able to do advance level classes, but they do not care to do any of the work. Getting a student
the help they need or providing them with challenging coursework is a job of the teacher. If they
themselves cannot accomplish this, they should at least get someone who can. This is what my
CT has tried to do over several weeks. She recognized about ten different students across several
periods could be placed into the Advance Algebra classes. Some of these kids do act bored in the
regular Algebra class and others have no motivation to do the work even though they are capable
of doing it (Observation). Like the Pink Floyd song, seeing the student means they are not just
another brick in the wall. A more personal relationship can be formed between student and
teacher when the student is seen as an individual.
There are many roles that a teachers view of their students color, gender, and
backgrounds have on their learning. The greatest role is that these views help shape and create
the classroom into what it is. The teacher may have a particular structure for their classes but
every class has a different dynamic, even for the same subject. I have observed 4 different Pre-
Algebra classes at three different schools and each has a very different dynamic. My CTs class
is setup to focus students attention towards the front while at the other two schools, the tables
were arranged to form groups (Observation). The arrangement of a classroom affects the
dynamics of a classroom which also affects the interactions of student and teacher. Another role
of teachers views is to not let students use color, gender, or background to justify not
performing well. Since teachers should not use stereotypes, neither should students. Stereotypes
can lead to misunderstandings, even if the stereotype is not negative. The perfect Asian-
American student may behave well but they still can be struggling in their learning (Delpit, pg
131). Students can use stereotypes to misunderstand themselves as well as others. This is why
teachers need to not enforce the use stereotypes in the classroom so that students will be less
likely to use them upon themselves and others.
Seeing the student relates with Bronfenbrenners theory very well. There is a hierarchy of
environments that affect a person. The student is like the epicenter of an earthquake. The places
that are nearest to the student are the ones that are most affected by the student and are also the
ones that can affect the student the most. This is what the teachers need to see and understand.
These places or institutions interact with each other in ways that affect can also the individual.
The individual can also affect the institutions. All levels of the environment have bi-directional
interactions. Therefore, students have the ability to cause change in institutions and the
institutions are able to cause change in a student (lecture,10/14/2013). Therefore understanding a
student can lead to providing help if needed and relevant connections between school and life.
This bi-directional relationship of the student and their environment is similar to any personal
relationships they may have. The stronger the relationship, the more each side can affect the
other. Building a strong relationship allows a teacher to see a student, which can lead to changes
in the classroom and changes to the students non-school life.
It is important for teachers to see and know themselves. However, seeing is more
important than knowing. A teacher being able to see themself means that they know what their
role is in the learning process of their students. Like Winks and Putneys hot air balloon
metaphor explaining the ZPD, a better balloon, i.e. someone who has more expertise on a
particular topic, will allow the student to rise higher than a worse one (Wink, pg 167). Teachers
are guides for students and one that knows their role as a guide better will do a better job of
teaching them. A guide though does not necessarily need to know themself. People are on a
continuous journey of life and acquire new knowledge and skills every day. People are
constantly changing because of this, so it is hard for one to truly know who they are. Teachers at
times will need a guide to help them reach their potential as well. The only way for one to
understand themselves is to constantly evaluate themselves. By constantly evaluating oneself,
one can figure out what teaching style can work for them and how they may improve. My CT
compares herself to her peers in order to see if she needs to change the way she teaches. Students
will not always get along with all their teachers but my CT noticed that some students were
radically different when she taught them compared to another teacher. Evaluations like these are
important if teachers want to improve themselves to better teach their students. Teachers seeing
themselves means they know their role as a teacher but a teacher knowing themselves is a
continual process of self-evaluation over ones life. Therefore, it is may be more important for a
teacher to be able to see themselves than knowing themselves before they interact with a diverse
body of students.
Part II
Addressing all the learning needs of all your students is a very difficult task.
Every class is different and the needs can change from time to time. No matter how hard any one
teacher may try to reach all their students, it is nearly impossible. This is not necessarily the fault
of the teacher or the student because they are only one part of a much larger system. However,
since teachers are the closest to the students, they can have the greatest impact on their learning.
Therefore teachers need to give the necessary help when possible and make the use of others
when they cannot themselves help the student.
All teachers learn about many different teaching styles that can help them become more
effective teachers. However, not every teaching strategy or style is right for every teacher or
class. Therefore, as a teacher I will have to blend together the different styles I have observed
and am learning about during lecture. I have to figure out what works for me in order to become
comfortable in my classroom. Some of the teaching theories I will pull from include
behaviorism, constructivism, and multiple intelligence.
Some topics in math fit very well into behaviorism. Math has a lot of basic skills that
need repeating over and over. While most students have got the hang of adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers, some still struggle to remember all the
rules and be able to apply them. Even after almost ten weeks about learning and using positive
and negative numbers, students still can struggle on it. Some students still struggle on their basic
multiplication tables. Time management is a big part in lesson planning, so basic skills like these
cannot be sole purpose. Students will have to adjust to reviewing old material while learning
about new. Some of these skills are low level, so behaviorism aligns well. To learn low level
skills, a lot of drill and skill can take place. I know even though getting these skills down is
important, we will still need to progress forward. Therefore, I will have to learn to build in these
rules into future lessons in order to review old material while learning new material. This will act
like review and practice for students that are behind while still providing new material to the rest
of the class. Math has a lot of basic skills that need mastering, so behavioristic teaching such as
drilling will help students learn the way math needs to be done.
One of the greatest assets a teacher can have is the students themselves. There are always
a couple of students who are at a higher level than the rest of the class. Therefore it makes sense
to be able to use them to help their classmates when you cannot. Multiple intelligence theory
tells us that people are better skilled in certain classes of intelligence. However, no one
intelligence class is better that another and they are not independent. Therefore, not only do the
differing intelligences work together internally, they can work together across students (Moran).
Class arrangement is key to making this work well. Depending on the type of classroom
furnishings there are, the pairing up of students or small table groups can be decided by students
strengths and weaknesses. Math can become very highly collaborative and so pairing up people
with different intelligences can help the students learn better. Struggling students can then rely
on their peers for help, thus helping the creation of some social scaffolding. A students peers
may at times be able to reach and understand them better. Multiple intelligence theory can help a
teacher decide on how to arrange a class of students so that the maximal amount of learning can
take place.
Math is can be taught in very abstract and generalized ways. This can make it hard for
students to understand math, especially when formulas/methods can be represented with many
different variables. Students have to understand what each variable means in that context. To
help ease the difficulty, concrete examples are done in class to explain the topic. However, some
students will still have problems with doing examples on their own. One student I worked with
had just seen four different examples during the lesson and they had time to start their
homework. The first problem he needed help with looked exactly like an example, just with
different numbers (observation, 11/5/2013). This situation happens often. The student knows
what to do but there is a mental block that makes them unable to not able to proceed. The
constructivism approach explains that learning is a product of community and social interaction
with others. Also learning is tied to the ZPD (Lecture, 10/21/2013). As I have seen over the past
few weeks in my placement, when a student asks for help, what they really want is for someone
to guide them. This is what the ZPD model is about and this is why a teacher should take
advantage of their high performing students when they can. A teacher cannot always be there to
guide every student. Using a students peers as a possible guide can allow the teacher to make
sure multiple people are receiving help at the same time. However, student guides may not be the
best guides for struggling students. Teachers will have to be able to know their students before
they allow them to help others. The constructivist way of teaching encourages group work while
helping a teacher being able to reach more students.
One of the things I have learned about student learning is that students are able to absorb
a lot of information. As explained earlier, students will often ask for help even though they really
know how to do the problem. They need someone guide them through the problem to check their
understanding. Before starting the quarter, I was anticipating more teaching students how to do
the problems rather than acting as a guide. This has led me to think about how to teach students
to try to internalize checklists that will help guide them outside the classroom. Donovan even
states that, students who were directed to engage in self-explanation as the solved
mathematics problems developed deeper conceptual understanding than did students who solved
those same problems but did not engage in self-explanation (Donovan, pg 149). Most of these
students do not have high confidence in their math abilities, so internalizing these checklists may
help them to gain that confidence. Another thing I have learned over the past six weeks is the
work teachers do outside of preparing for class lessons. Being able to be at my placement during
my CTs prep period has allowed me to do this. As I have stated before, when my CTs class
schedule was changed up, she wanted to move students to classes that were suited to their level
rather than holding them back and not challenging them in her class. School administration will
not always place students in the right classes. Sometimes when a student is doing poorly in a
class, it is not because they do not understand the material but that they do not want to do the
work. It takes the teacher to see through the student and to push the administration to place them
into a more appropriate class. This is a way a teacher can really push students to their full
potential.